Saturday, August 30, 2014

I remember that saying
from way back then during the heyday of the feminist movement, which really puzzled me, because at that point - I must have been in my mid-twenties - I wasn't quite sure when 'old' would start. I'm still not sure about that today, but that's a different story. In any case, this saying certainly came to my mind
today when I received two orders for packages from the May 2014 Collection for my
fabric club. Which had been a combination of six shades of purple.

Fabric Club Collection May 2014

My usual
procedure is that I dye a certain amount of metres in every color – usually 4
or 5 lengths of fabric, depending on whether it is a month including the
‘light’ subscribers or not. One of the lengths I put on a bolt to include it in
my overall selection, the others get cut up into fat quarters and half metres. A
certain number of these has already been sold when they are being cut, according
to the number of subscriptions. The remaining packages are the additional
packages of the collection, for sale either via the website, or on offer when I
go to a market. Thus, depending on the always slightly changing number of
subscribers, the number of surplus packages available may vary, but I usually
try to have around eight packages of Fat Quarters to begin with. These may be
gone quickly, or they may linger a bit – for example, I still have a few
packages from November 2013.

Although that does not necessarily mean this was a
particularly unpopular combination, in fact, in that case I had an unusually
large number of surplus packages, if I remember correctly, there were 12 or so.
In any case, after a certain time, the surplus packages are all gone.

Because I
went to market in Karlsruhe
with my fabrics for the first time this year, which was scheduled around the
twentieth of the month, I had finished dyeing the May collection before I left
and took the surplus packages with me to sell at the stand.

Looking down on a segment of my fabric selection as it appears at the stand

The regular
packages had been packed, too, and were shipped to the subscribing customers
after I returned, toward the end of the month. Which is my usual approximate
date of shipment.

When I
returned from Karlsruhe,
all the surplus packages had already been sold – that was the first time my
selection was sold out before it had been shipped!

I have to
admit that I was surprised by this success, as I myself am not that much a fan
of purple. In fact, I had only decided on this combination after Frauke had
made a remark that she thought there wasn’t enough purple in my overall
selection, which came at a time when I was just beginning to make plans for
May. Because I knew I wasn’t going to have enough fabric left over to do
purples after finishing a full collection, I put off my original plans for May
until July and did purples. Several times have I been asked whether there were
still packages of May available, although the website has been marked ‘sold
out’. And now today’s double enquiry... which leaves me wondering - perhaps I should
do a collection in-between? Not another purple for the subscribers, because,
after all, they may feel similarly about purple like I do, and I wouldn’t want
to tax their patience by inflicting another six shades of purple on them so
soon after May. But perhaps as a special edition on the occasion of my first
appearance with my fabrics at the OEQC festival in October in Veldhoven? I think I will
decide that after the next market in Erding, in two weeks.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Entertaining a nine-year-old during vacation is keeping me busy, so progress on that piece has been slow.
But steady, and I have finished the part with the drawn threads. It does look quite interesting.

And because another vacation activity is taking us out of town today, I have another day to think about how I will continue. Will I go across the drawn threads once, to keep them down, or will I take the risk...? How will I quilt the remaining dark blue section?

And then there is still no. 2, waiting... It's getting high time that these pieces be finished - I need to hand in the address list for the invitations, write an article for the newspaper, put together the list of quilts for the insurance... Lots of things that need to be done before an exhibition, even if that is still 7 weeks away.

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Yesterday I
saw a report in the paper on a 35-yr-old woman who is getting ready to set off
for a bike trip to New
Zealand. That’s right: a bike trip TO New Zealand.

She has sold all her belongings, is taking only a tent, bike tools and a few
clothes, as much as will fit into a set of bike carry-alls, and is planning to
cycle to New Zealand. From Munich.
Her planned route is here: http://onayellowbike.com/route-2/. She will be
leaving on September 1.

I admire
her guts. I’m not sure I would like to cycle through Iran these days, a single woman. But
then, come to think of it – is there any safer route right now – through Syria and Israel? Or down the African coast
where all those vicious viruses are appearing? The heart of Africa?...
She will be writing about her tour, which is also a charity event, on her website. Apparently, her reports will be in German.

This story
reminded me of Sandy Robson, the woman who is kayaking from Ulm
in Germany to Australia, and
whom I hadn’t checked up on in a while. She is still at it, you can read her blog here, fighting floods in India right
now.

I love
things like that. And doesn’t everybody wish, every once in a while, that one
were in another place, another kind of life than the one right now?

My biggest
adventure in that direction of ‘leaving it all behind and going somewhere else’
was cycling through New
Zealand entirely on my own, for two months,
after I had finished my Ph.D. But even though I was at a difficult junction at
that point, after the break-up of a relationship and not really knowing what I
wanted to do with the rest of my life, I had not given up everything at home,
it was ‘just’ an extended vacation.

In the first picture I was on the boat to Queenstown, after I had arrived at the sheep station from the backside through the wilderness (unpaved roads) and was approached by three elderly ladies taking an outing who admired what I was doing, wished they had done something like that when they had been younger - I think, it was even one of them who took my picture.

Sometimes I
like to think that had I not met my husband when I finally did at the advanced
age of almost 36 I might have packed up and gone to NZ, due to my increasing
unhappiness with my job at the university back then. But I had bought a grand
piano even before I met my husband –that’s not something you just pack up and
go to NZ with, on the other hand I don’t think I could easily have parted with
it again relatively quickly after I got it. So probably this would not have
happened, even if I had not met my husband, and all these musings are futile –
what would life be like now if I had not done this and that back then? However,
these thoughts do reappear every once in a while.

And it may
happen while quilting... I’m still struggling with those two geometric pieces I
wrote about earlier this week. I thought writing about it and publishing it on
the blog would have a bit of the effect that Tom Sayer makes use of – when a
wall is too high for you, throw a cap over it, and you will have to get over
that wall to retrieve that cap, or you’ll be in trouble with Aunt Polly. But
writing about my struggles with the quilting in these pieces hasn’t made it
easier.

I did not
start with no. 2 after all, but no. 3. I wanted to do something different than
only straight lines – I might have mentioned that before? – partly because I
did not want to have to spend hours sinking zillions of threads. I had the
brilliant idea of trying this:

Pretty soon
after I had started I realized that the idea was less than brilliant in many
aspects. First, it doesn’t take less time than sinking zillions of threads. It
is a rather lengthy and only moderately relaxing/meditative mode of quilting.
Second, I have to be very careful so the drawn threads don’t pull the quilt
together – but I am using my brand new embroidery frame for that, and so far it
looks ok. Thirdly I will probably go over the inbetween parts of the drawn
threads afterwards, to minimize the outside dangers. Too many things could get
caught in them. But by the time I realized it all, I had already done more than
made it possible to take even that little bit out and start another option. I
woul d have had to discard the whole piece. I still may have to do that, who
knows. But I won’t find out until it’s done. Yeah, such a great way to spend
one’s time! Now if I had been in New Zealand in the first place...?

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

I’ve been back from England
since last Friday, after a delicious airplane breakfast.

It is summer vacation, supposed to be blazing hot, days spent at the
swimming pool to channel a nine-year-old’s energies. But I have already worn woollen
socks when going to bed three time since I returned, and it is only the second
half of August! I even unpacked my down duvet one evening because it all felt
so cold. The duvet turned out to be too hot yet during the night, but that
doesn’t mean it feels any more like summer. Lots of showers, and cool
temperatures. When I went walking in the woods day before yesterday I could
distinctly smell ‘fall’. Somehow it doesn’t feel quite right – we didn’t have a
real winter, spring was too early and not ‘right’, and now we are being cheated
out of a summer, too. Well, then I would really like it to snow for good - I am
almost out of snow-dyed fabrics, and a fair coming up in September... Here is a picture of a rare moment of sunshine.

No, I am not complaining.

I did get back to work pretty much immediately. With interruptions when
we haven’t been able to arrange for friends of my son’s to come over, or for
him to go there. But I am working. Right now I am quilting three tops which I
sewed just before I left for England,
and which are all three still destined for the exhibition in October. The three
tops are all based on the same idea, which could be called an ‘amputated log
cabin’ (only three sides in each round, and each of them a different width of
log), with a slight variation between them in terms of arrangement, and of
color. And they will be displayed in different orientations.

I pricked myself badly several times while quilting the first one, as I
had talked myself into skipping the basting, just pinning it. Ruefully I basted
the final two rounds before continuing to the end, these long Clover pins are
soooo good and sharp!

For this top out of the three, I decided on rather dense parallel line
quilting, which adjusted to the pattern a bit, and it took me longer, I think,
to finish the quilting than to sew the entire top!

I have done some unpicking,
too, including having to get out the needle punches.

When I had finally finished quilting it yesterday morning I realized that the
thread I used for basting – not a ‘proper’ basting thread, which I couldn’t
find fast enough, but a polyester sewing thread – made for quite a nice effect
under the quilting lines.

I certainly won’t leave these marks in this piece, but am curious as to whether and how I will make use of this interesting discovery in the future.

Two more to quilt, and as often I was debating with myself as to how to
do this. Didn’t want to do the same kind of dense quilting in the other two –
for one thing, because it took so long, but also because I want them to be
markedly different despite the fact that they all three derived from basically
the same idea. But I had enough time while basting no. 2, before I could
have been pricked badly again, to give it some thought. Perhaps a little too
much thought, because I almost discarded that one. I had the hardest time figuring
out how to quilt it, suddenly I didn’t like it any more at all, and I had
already folded it up and put it aside. Somehow it felt like it couldn't be saved, with that overpowering light blue in the lower corner...

Then I looked at no. 3, did a few test
stitches on a cut-off piece from another quilt trying to figure out whether
this idea won’t work – and retrieved no. 2, because finally an idea had
arrived. That one will now be the next to be quilted after all.